


miserably modern oracle

by atiredonnie



Category: Homestuck
Genre: Anyways, Character Study, F/F, because I love her, this is literally just an attempt to articulate, what i think is going on in rose's head
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-28
Updated: 2020-10-28
Packaged: 2021-03-08 21:28:38
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,271
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27253441
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/atiredonnie/pseuds/atiredonnie
Summary: Habit is the greatest indicator of love. When you give a tissue to someone before they sneeze, when their hands move to cradle your head as you sit silently on the couch.If Rose hadn’t killed and eaten God for breakfast the other day, she would’ve started praying around now.
Relationships: Rose Lalonde/Kanaya Maryam
Comments: 2
Kudos: 17





	miserably modern oracle

Oh, okay, here I am. 

I - shit, shit, this is still so new. I. Okay, okay, alright. Fuck, I’m drowning in myself. This portrayal of my neurological dissatisfaction is almost Lynchian, isn’t it? Lots of… growling. And scraping. And… windchimes? And I’m still hollow, somehow, which is fundamentally fucking unfair. 

I used to pride myself in that unfairness, didn’t I? I reveled in that shit. Thirteen year old girls tend to. I micromanaged my unbelievably awful world by framing myself as the strictly Doylist heroine of a madcap fantasy. All black lipstick and emotional suppression, singing myself to sleep with stories of other little children invaded by horrible space monsters, dreaming about my own narcissism. Is there anything more self-obsessed than the teenage fascination with bittersweet torture porn about ourselves? Because I remember clinging to Puella Magi Madoka Magica and Higurashi like lifelines. Oh, of course there were the Lovecraftian inspirations, but in the end it all boiled down to suffering, and the specific, explicitly feminine and youthful nature of it. 

Call it societal misogyny, but it was also something I desperately needed. 

I don’t know where I would be without these projections of my personality profiles dying over and over. The lurid nature of it, the red and black and violet all spilling out, fractals of insanity and death. My association with these works was that of a courtly love. I gazed from afar - came so close to touching - and yet the default assumption was that I’d never fall from the heavens like them, no Icarus, no bleeding wax. No sunshine. 

I kept candles in my room for years. I didn’t want to believe the smell of them was intoxicating, out of a constructed, intimate weakness. I didn’t want the globs of burning white splattered across my hands and thighs and open mouth to mean anything to me. 

It’s easy to look back at all of this now and laugh. Here’s what I understand about myself now that I’m iron: 

1\. Every previous iteration of myself is one I have treated with mockery. Each new step on the evolutionary ladder is recognized as the finale, the apex of personal maturity, and every Rose that came before was considered an abomination of the highest caliber. I could not - would not - treat previous vulnerabilities or moral frameworks as legitimate. Don’t ask me why. I have all the answers, but some questions are intended to be theoretical.  
2\. The projected Rose was that of violence and abject coldness. At night, sometimes, fingers clenched vice-like around the warmth of downy sheets, I would reassure myself, an almost stubborn tint to the rhythm of my internal monologue, that the way I behaved around other people was just fine, actually. They weren’t me. I didn’t know who I was - intimacy with any part of myself was staggeringly intimidating. But it was a comfort. Even when I wanted so much to reject comfort.  
3\. As a continuation of 2, the newest conclusion is this: there is no fake Rose. There is no projection. I am the mask, et cetera et cetera. Doctrine of fundamental good/you can be fundamentally good.  
4\. And, a continuation of 3, I failed to live up to that.

Isaac Asimov. Three laws of robotics. We all know them. 

I’m still in awe over the fact that this isn’t armor. There’s nothing in here. It would be easier, maybe, if my own body was locked away somewhere beneath these caverns of steel and mangled bolts. Curled up in the fetal position, maybe, an infant, dreaming in an incubation of self-sustaining sweat. Spine flattening like a used rod. Fingers curling in, one after the other. Freud would have been right, then. Return to the womb. 

Whatever humanity is left of me, I have irreversibly hurt it. 

Honestly, I can sleep easy at night knowing that. I don’t sleep, but if I did, I could. I have enough moral qualms already. At this point I’m hanging them up on my wall like a proud taxidermist and his nuclear family of filmy-eyed deer corpses. A singular hand of trauma. My femme fatale leans across the table, a smudged hint of cleavage peeking out as her eyes comically widen over her fistful of cards. I smirk, cigar perched between my lips, and reveal every inch of philosophical agonizing to her with a gaudy, nigh-ostentatious flourish. It smells like ozone and saxophone music, and the night is young. 

There’s an exchange, between Eurydice and Orpheus, and even in my childhood attempts to pretend that any story grasped me beyond inflicting the occasional eddying of self-made murder and shame, it still clung to me. 

It goes like this. 

**EURYDICE**

Orpheus, hold on  
Hold on tight  
It won’t be long  
The darkest hour of the darkest night  
Comes right before the dawn.

(Orpheus turns.)  
You’re early. 

**ORPHEUS**

I missed you. 

_(hadestown, nytw)_

No one’s ever missed me like that. 

Tangibly, I mean. 

I used to think it was odd that there was no lilt, no cadence in the words exchanged between Orpheus and Eurydice. In a story about music, there’s no rhythm to those particular hushed whispers. Strangely enough, I think I get it now. 

We are blessed with the unique privilege of seeing the two of them repeating the motions of their domestic life inches away from death. The slow and equal rotation of their bodies, larger than stars, untouchable in the leaking of their humanity from their routine. 

Habit is the greatest indicator of love. When you give a tissue to someone before they sneeze, when their hands move to cradle your head as you sit silently on the couch. It’s like building a home. 

The foundation is in the movement. The simple anticipation of need. 

No one’s ever held me like that. 

Dirk doesn’t have faith in humans. I see it in the curve of his mouth - he tightens up at the mention of his personhood, thumb rubbing irritatedly against his forefinger, as if to smudge off his own prints, burn the data that records him as blood and bones, a bigger piece of a grander sky. Dirk likes to think that the lot of us - that the lot of them are beyond the touch of things that are good. 

I remember - Fuck, I remember so well, I hurt in places that don’t even exist anymore - I remember forbidding myself from using words like good, because they were so small and stupid and weak and in their four syllables could not even begin to capture the feeling of

The sun, filtering through the trees. 

A blur of red text, scrolling across my field of vision like fire ants. 

The weightlessness of my sneakers and the pink shoelaces - 

The reading and disassembling of Rome. 

To be human is to be soft, in a way I have never allowed myself to be. Even when my skin was still gold from the sun. 

To be human is to stare at your wife, crouched on the ground, while you sit on the sofa behind her. And your hands reach around to encircle the back of her head, pushing wayward strands of charcoal black and spilled ink behind her ears, like a prayer, wishing for just a minute that there was enough of you to hold her in her arms, that your mouth was enough to pray (your hate of God and the authority beyond notwithstanding) and kiss the nape of her neck, all at the same time, all at once, like mercury over the edge. 

I want to remember being human like that.

I love you. I love you. I’m sorry.


End file.
